Thursday, May 01, 2008

It's extremely extremely rare that someone in Sports Media bashes their own, but it's happened to ESPN again. Tim Legler was on Dan Le Batard's radio show yesterday and when asked about the state of Sports Media he had this to say about his network's dealings with the Sport he covers. Via Sports by Brooks...

“I look at our network (ESPN) as much as any and think it’s become a situation where it’s a great time to be a journalist, because there are so many opportunities on television and I know that it pays more and you get greater exposure … now there’s a lot of guys (sportswriters) that are household names. That’s how they started out, and that’s fine when you’re giving information, and you’re giving your opinion and reporting things.

“But then sometimes we blur the line and (sportswriters) cross over into providing analysis and I think sometimes people aren’t qualified to do it. If you really dive into it (what sportswriters are saying), I think most of the time it’s inaccurate.“

It's a harsh criticism, but it's true. If you watch ESPN in a 24-hour period there are probably anywhere from 15-20 writers from around the Country on various programs (see: First Take). With their Basketball coverage alone they have two main players that are former or current columnists during the day (Wilbon, S.A.S.). Some are good for the Network, but the bad ones are either just trying to be controversial or just don't belong on television.

The funny part of the whole conversation is that Le Batard is one of the people Legs is complaining about and he obviously didn't delve further into the question after that statement.

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Comments:

It's a good point that all of these MSMer's need to realize. Michael Wilbon should be telling stories about an athlete's personal struggles and not telling us that that player deserved what they had coming (see: Sean Taylor). Wilbon slams "us" for giving an opinion that no one cares about yet we could say the same thing about him. Legs is dead on here.

Yeah, I love watching ESPN. You get to choose between dumb ex-players, who last passed a legitimate class in grade school, who can barely read the teleprompter (Legler, Emmit, Gottleib) or nerds who write for sports try and be funny (everybody).